Fall and the Moon of Radical Change
Friday gratefuls: Kate’s good week. Rigel’s returned appetite. Her getting on the bed last night, a bit wobbly, but there. Kep. So dignified and attentive. The sweetness of our life together. The approaching election. Ahi tuna from Tony’s. Pickup from Safeway. Covid, still changing our culture, our lives, our visions of the future. Climate change and those who work to limit and mitigate it. The Sun.
Kate’s had a week of no nausea, no appointments. A wonder. And, wonderfull. We’ve pushed into new territory, goaded from behind by Covid and being together. A greater appreciation for each other, for our, as Jim Harrison’s poem says, “…life of dogs and children and the far wide country
out by rivers, rumpled by mountains.” Carpe Diem. Thanks, Tom.
Brother Mark asked me to think about now and 1968. “Have the changes of 2020 been different from 1968?” It’s an interesting question. Both, I believe are capstones of an era. 1968 found many of us who were young throwing off the post-WW II culture of conformity, working and not thinking, easy racism and easy wars. Sex was not forbidden. Make love not war was more than just a slogan. It was a lifestyle. We were angry young folks, too. The war. The draft. In loco parentis. (look it up) We found protesting the war both necessary and liberating. See Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 on Netflix.
2020. Protests now seem to come in two flavors: Black Lives Matter and their allies, Proud Boys, the Klan, and their allies. There was some pushback in the 60’s from blue collar workers and straight parents, but for the most part the protests were anti-war in nature though the civil rights movement still had some energy after a hard, but productive first few years of the 60’s. A major difference now is that the alt-right impulses of the 60’s, and they were there, were seen as fringe and cuckoo. Now, with the agitator in chief the fringe has cover in the Whitehouse. That makes them think they are less fringy now. They’re wrong.
I have a lot of other thoughts and I know this is cursory, but I want to post it today. Get back on the board.
